GOProud, a very small but well-financed and well-organized homosexual activist group, has enlisted a dozen or so local tea-party activists to sign a letter to Republican leaders in the House and Senate to adopt its agenda.

Ironically, of course, GOProud has its own “social agenda,” including an end to the ban on open homosexuality in the military, same-sex marriage, hate-crimes legislation, etc.

Apparently, it’s just the “conservative” social agenda to which it objects.

Though only a few tea-party activists have been seduced to work with GOProud, the ones who do are certain to get more than their share of media coverage – just as the tiny population of vocal Republican homosexuals does.

That’s what is really going on here.

It is about creating the illusion that tea-party activists only care about materialistic issues.

It is about creating the illusion that a movement based purely on economic expediency will be bigger than one focused on transcendent issues like life, liberty, justice, morality.

It is about creating the illusion that you can actually solve the serious problems plaguing America with economic recipes alone.

It is these illusions, ironically, that are being used in an attempt to neuter some of the principal concerns of the incoming class of Republican legislators, who were actually propelled to victory on Election Day by the mobilization of millions of tea-party activists with much more on their mind than simply economics.

These illusions represent the gravest threat to the longevity and future success of the tea-party movement, as I wrote in my recent book, “The Tea Party Manifesto.”

The Republican establishment would like nothing better than encouragement from any quarter to focus exclusively on economic issues. This is what the Republican establishment has always been about – thus the historic term “country clubbers.”

The big lie being told by GOProud and others, like Dick Armey and Freedomworks, is that the tea-party movement is only about the size of government and economic policy.

So extreme are some of those pushing the economics-only mantra that they even classify concerns about illegal immigration as off the table for discussion.

Let me tell you something: That is not the heart and the soul of the tea-party movement I know. And the day the tea-party movement adopts that kind of narrow agenda is the day it becomes irrelevant and impotent.

It’s a simple fact that America’s problems go much deeper than economics and materialism. It’s the political left that holds everything is economics and materialism is all there is.

That’s not what conservatives have ever believed.

That’s not what our Founding Fathers believed.

That’s not what the Declaration of Independence suggests.

You can’t have a self-governing society without a moral consensus on an issue as simple as the definition of marriage. You can’t have a self-governing society if the will of the people is continually overturned by federal judges who want to impose their own morality on the rest of us. You can’t have a self-governing society if the laws of the land are not enforced by those in power.

GOProud and their handful of friends who cloak themselves as tea-party activists don’t understand that every decision made by government represents a moral choice – whether it is a choice of tax policy, speed limit, abortion, health care, marriage or war.

Confiscatory taxes and unlimited government are as morally bankrupt as they are fiscally bankrupt. Illegal immigration is illegal for a reason – it’s morally wrong. Killing unborn babies and same-sex marriage are also morally wrong.

By the way, taxes and the size of government are also “social issues,” since they involve people and are supposed to be resolved by people.

The media and political establishments love to shove aside any issues they don’t like, marginalize them, stereotype them, elevate those individuals and groups who want no part of them.

Don’t be fooled by this tactic.

GOProud is not the tea-party movement. Not by a long shot is it the tea-party movement. The tea-party movement is comprised of a clear majority of people of faith and moral convictions. If the tea-party movement ever goes the way of GOProud, not only is the movement dead, so is America as we have known it for 234 years.